If you’re reading this post, it means I’m just kidding with that thing I just said.

I have a rather deadpan sense of humor, both in real life and on the blog. The key to deadpan humor is that you don’t explain that you’re “just kidding,” since that takes the bite out of the humor. But the danger in deadpan humor is that if you don’t say you’re kidding, then someone will later accuse you of having been serious.

Hence this post. My strategy in the future will be to make my deadpan jokes without explaining that I’m joking — but to link to this post to prove to doubters that I really was.

My seven-year-old daughter Lauren asked today: “How old is Granddaddy today? 81?”

My wife replied: “He would have been 82 today.”

Lauren said: “He is 82 — in Heaven!”

Even though he’s gone, it is a tradition for me to wish him a Happy Birthday on this blog. So: Happy Birthday, Dad. I hope you still appreciate the tradition — in Heaven.

P.S. Another tradition is wearing his shamrock bow tie. But somehow, that seems to work only when you’re wearing a suit. (It just doesn’t work as well with shorts and a T-shirt.) So I bent the rules and wore it yesterday, instead of today. As always, it got a lot of comments.

We lifted a glass in your honor at Ye Olde King’s Head in Santa Monica tonight. If they don’t have one of those where you are, I’ll have to question whether it’s really Heaven . . .

P.P.S. Happy St. Patrick’s Day to all!

One of the fired U.S. Attorneys has directly contradicted the major premise of an L.A. Times article published about him.

Yesterday, the L.A. Times published a story titled Cummins fears corruption investigation led to his firing:

Still uncertain exactly why he was fired, former U.S. Atty. H.E. “Bud” Cummins III wonders whether it had something to do with the probe he opened into alleged corruption by Republican officials in Missouri amid a Senate race there that was promising to be a nail-biter.

. . . .

In January 2006, [Cummins] had begun looking into allegations that Missouri Gov. Matt Blunt had rewarded GOP supporters with lucrative contracts to run the state’s driver’s license offices. . . . . In an interview Thursday, Cummins expressed disgust that the Bush administration may have fired him and the others for political reasons. “You have to firewall politics out of the Department of Justice. Because once it gets in, people question every decision you make. Now I keep asking myself: ‘What about the Blunt deal?’ “

In an e-mail to TPM Muckraker, Cummins disputes this (all emphasis mine):

Unfortunately, that isn’t what I said, or at least what I intended to say, and it is not the case.

The context of my conversation with LA Times reporter Richard Serrano was clearly that I do not know of ANY connection between the Missouri investigation (which actually had nothing to do with Governor Blunt) and my termination.

Cummins repeats this later in the e-mail:

I do not know of any connection whatsoever to the Missouri investigation and my firing. I am not asking myself (or anyone else) about that.

Cummin’s e-mail negates the premise of the entire article. So maybe, if we all write the Readers’ Representative, we can get a small-box correction on Page A2.

ReadersRep@latimes.com

P.S. Cummins makes clear elsewhere in the e-mail that he is upset over the firings, and believes that “improper political considerations were on the table when some or all of the US Attorneys were fired.” I’m not sure that his opinion on the issue carries any special weight, however. He admits: “I do not know why the seven were fired.” The only situation where he has special knowledge is his own — and, he concedes, “they have essentially told the truth in my case.”